By Puseletso Mokoena

Mabaso made an oversight visit in several buildings owned by the city's housing entity, the Johannesburg Social Housing Company on Wednesday. He says the visit was intended to take stock of the city's buildings and put plans in place for alternative accommodation for illegal occupants.

According to Mabaso, plans are underway to return the Johannesburg inner city to its former glory, by first turning it into a construction site, after the city recently made headlines for its dilapidated state, when the country’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa expressed concern over the deterioration of the conditions. Mabaso has since vowed to remove people who have illegally invaded buildings owned by the city.

“The Mayor gave us an instruction that we need to clean the inner city, and we took a decision that we must prioritise our own properties first, to demonstrate that we are serious about cleaning the inner city. We need to turn the inner city into a construction site, but we are unable to do that because majorities of the properties here in the inner city are occupied," Mabaso.

He also expressed concern about the unknown businesses that are operating in the city's properties.

“This now says to us we need to zoom in that space so that we are able to check all the business that are operating in our properties, because we cannot lease spaces for illegal operations in our properties," Mabaso said. Residents have expressed concern about the cross-border bus stop outside one of the buildings. 

“We do not like having this bus stopping which is operating illegally outside of our place of residence. We want the officials to remove the buses because we feel it contributes to the crime levels around this area,” one of the residents said. “This space is not right our children are now faced with a life drug abuse some of them are now living in the streets," said another resident.

Mabaso has also highlighted that businesses that are operating illegally in buildings owned by the City need stronger bylaw enforcement.
---SABC---